excerpt from Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson (1940)

I have spoken of the religion of the countryside. Its cults certainly do not exhibit the gods in their highest aspects, nor do the rustic customs belong to the higher strata of religion. But they are near the bedrock of primitive ideas and they have survived the high gods, lasting on into our own day in Greece, as very similar forms of religion have in other European countries. I have spoken also of the religion of the townspeople. I have emphasized the fact that when a great number of people came together in a town and engaged in industry and commerce, their mode of life was profoundly changed as a result of their separation from nature and the cultivation of the soil and that as a consequence their religious needs and outlook also changed. There were other religious movements which were not a result of the difference between town and country, although they were connected with social conditions. This is especially true of the early age before the Persian Wars. I have said that this was, in part at least, an age of poverty and social distress. On the other hand it was an age of brisk and diversified activity, of sea voyages and colonization, of discoveries and of progress in all directions. The foundations of Greek science were laid at this time. Religion, too, was involved in these changes and developments. The new movements in Greek religion originated in this age, and they did not leave popular religion untouched.

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excerpt from Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson (1940)

In a previous chapter I strongly emphasized the fact that in early times Greece was a country of tillers of the soil and of herdsmen, who subsisted on the products of their own labor. To these, of course, we must add the owners of the great landed estates, the nobility. But I have not forgotten that Greece was also a country of city-states. In some of the towns industrial and commercial activities were started, and these towns played the leading role in the development of Greek culture and even in religion. In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Greece was apparently overpopulated. The products of its soil were not sufficient for the increasing number of its inhabitants. We know from Hesiod how straitened were the circumstances of the small farmers. The stress was relieved not only by emigration and the founding of colonies around the Mediterranean, but also by the rise of industry and commerce in certain towns. At that time the laborers in the many workshops were not slaves, as they were in the classical age. The poor country population crowded into the towns, where they could find work and earn a livelihood which, although poor, was more certain than that provided by the seasonal labor of agriculture. This is the background of the social and political changes of the early historical age in Greece. The power of the nobility broke down. In the towns which were ahead in the development of industry and commerce tyrants arose. The rule of the tyrants was founded on the broad mass of the city population, and the tyrants strove to promote the interests of the masses. But this was only an interlude. The tyrants were expelled before the early age reached its end, and democracy, or at least a mitigated aristocracy, was established. 1

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